Telemarketing is an ever-increasing problem for those wishing to use their telephones simply for private or business communications. Many people targeted by telemarketers do not want to receive such unsolicited calls and, accordingly, it is desired that an appropriate method and apparatus be employed to defeat such calls before they are apparent to the owner or user of the phone. While there are processes by which individuals can request that their telephone number be removed from dialing lists of telemarketers, the same has been found to be only marginally effective since there are currently many exceptions to Do Not Call (DNC) list compliance requirements and many telemarketing companies do not honor these do not call requests or federal, state or a company's DNC Lists. Additionally, “block number lists” are limited in the number of calling numbers that can be identified by the end user. Moreover, “blocking” is a function of the carrier (or the consumer using a white/black list device or app) matching the “blocked” number identified by the end user to an incoming call via Automatic Number Identification (ANI). If a telemarketer or Robo caller (TM/Robo) uses multiple lines with changing numbers to place the calls, the ANI changes and the number identified by the end user no longer matches, thus the TM/Robo call is completed to the end user and not blocked.
In the past, efforts have been made to provide systems for use in association with land-line phones introducing a Special Information Tone (SIT) when the phone is taken off hook, indicating to the originator of the call, if it is computer generated, that the phone that has been reached is not a viable one for the purpose of the call. Accordingly, the call is terminated. A system of that nature is shown in prior U.S. Pat. No. 5,920,623.
Present-day modern telecommunications switching networks must go far beyond simple determination of where a voice call must be directed in order for a communication to take place. Today, the telecommunications network must be intelligent enough to determine the type of communication desired, i.e., voice, data, video, or Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and be able to do the same routing and connecting functions as well as billing functions it had to do in the past. Further complicating the challenge for the intelligent network is the introduction of “mobile” or cellular technology, which further complicates the notion of origination of a “call” as well as determination of the destination of a “call.” Today the intelligent network must also keep track of a myriad of “features” that an individual may have selected to subscribe to, insure that appropriate billing takes place, as well as assure that the features selected work properly.
In the prior art, such as U.S. Pat. No. 5,920,623, a physical device connected to the subscriber's phone, typically his or her home “land-line” phone, simply “answered” an incoming call on behalf of the subscriber and delivered supervisory tones such that if the calling party were one with whom the subscriber did not wish to speak, the device would cause the calling party's device to disconnect believing that the call could not be completed. The telephone network per se needed no special work or “conditioning” relative to call origination or completion in order for the system to do its work.
In a world where most consumers now utilize mobile or cellular phones or similar mobile devices where the physical connection of an accessory device is not practical, in order to accomplish the same “blocking” of annoying and potentially dangerous/criminal calls, a different scheme must be put in place in order to cause the same impact for the consumer.
While the backbone of telephone switching networks has changed little from land lines, the network elements are increasingly intelligent in that they can process calls faster and can access millions of individual subscriber “profiles” in order to deliver a vast set of feature functionality. Several of these critical elements include the Mobile Switching Center (MSC), which basically controls and identifies calling access as coming from or to a mobile device versus a land line and an SCP (Service Control Point), which can determine exactly how and over what connective facilities a particular call request may transit.
There is a need for a system focused upon cellular or wireless and VoIP based calls and in which the MSC and the SCP have a direct impact on how the call is processed and therefore how and under what conditions the call from the caller to the called party may be interrupted before the subscriber's device rings, if, in fact, the subscriber has requested that the individual call be blocked, either generically or specifically. A particular desire for such a system would be the ability for the SCP to act upon calls in a unique fashion based upon preset rules and most especially to interact with peripheral devices or systems in the carrier network. This method is already demonstrated today in a carrier's ringback tone system from which a subscriber-selected audio track is played instead of the call progress ringing sound. If the SCP identifies the telephone subscriber as one who has subscribed to the RingBack service, it would route the call to the RingBack platform to play a ringback track prior to routing the call to the called party and would allow the RingBack system to perform its function before signaling the SCP to proceed to route the call to the called party's device.
Some telephone carriers today actually offer a call “blocking” service to their subscribers, but it is generally limited to blocking 12-100 specifically identified numbers (identified by the individual subscriber) and does not allow blocking an entire “class” of calls, such as those from what are commonly called “Robo” callers that call with advertising, promotions, requests to participate in surveys, and often political campaign messages, all of which calls are undesired by the subscriber. This blocking process is a manual process determined by the subscriber after a call has been received to block a specific number, thereby using one of the blocked number slots. Robo dialers frequently change their “called from” number to circumvent the blocked number functionality that will quickly fill all the available blocked number slots of a vigilant subscriber. The subscriber does not know which numbers to “unblock” and is quickly left with no number blocking functionality. While this existing capability could be expanded by the carriers, the carriers believe that the action of blocking should be the specific decision of the subscriber, not the carrier, and the individual databases that would be required would likely overwhelm the SCP, both in terms of volume and processing. While a modified blocking capability may be an option for Carriers who do not offer a Ringback peripheral device, the invention includes the provisioning of the Special Information Tones within the SCP database such that when the called party is identified as a mobile user, the automated TM/Robo call is denied in a fashion similar to the action of the Ringback system in this application.
This gives rise to the opportunity to cause the blocking in a peripheral device under the direction of the SCP, which is a standard component of the Intelligent Network (IN) telephone system, which is used to control the service between callers and the processing of calls. Standard SCPs in the telecom industry today are deployed using SS7, SIGTRAN or SIP technologies. The SCP queries the service data point (SDP), which holds the actual database and directory. The SCP, using the database from the SCP, identifies the destination number to which the call is to be routed. This is the same mechanism that is used to route 800 numbers.
SCP may also communicate with an intelligent peripheral (IP) to play voice messages, or prompt for information to the user or to the calling party, such as prepaid long distance using account codes or more recently RingBack tones that interact with the calling party before the call is completed to the called party. This is done by implementing telephone feature codes like “#” (the pound sign), which can be used to terminate the input for a user name or password or can be used for call forwarding, selective ringing or a number of other carrier-provided features. These are realized using Intelligent Network Application Part (INAP) that sits above Transaction Capabilities Application Part (TCAP) on the SS7 protocol stack. The TCAP is part of the top or 7th layer of the OSI layer breakdown.